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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A custard pie made with sugar, sweet cream or milk, lemon juice and zest, eggs, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat egg yolks until light.

  2. Add sugar and beat again.

  3. Add juice of both lemons.

  4. Add grated rind of one lemon.

  5. Mix in melted butter if using milk.

  6. Line pie pan with crust.

  7. Add cream to mixture.

  8. Pour mixture into pie crust.

  9. Bake until custard is firm.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 2 tablespoons sugar.

  3. Spread meringue evenly over pie.

  4. Return to oven until set.

  5. Let cool before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving the filling its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the filling its tart flavour and helps it set.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the custard texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam to form the light, browned meringue topping.

The step that matters

Bake until custard is firm. Egg yolks set as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny filling while overbaking can make it weep or turn grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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